Right now: Oklahoma City is at 41, good.
Is the air safe to breathe in Oklahoma City today?
In Oklahoma City, BreatheCheck reads 41 as Go. The cutoffs: go below 101, keep it short and easy from 101 to 150, move it indoors above 150. These are our own thresholds, drawn on the EPA bands — EPA itself classifies 101–150 as Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups and does not tell you how long to stay out.
Go AQI 0–100
Normal outdoor plans. No change needed.
Short & unloaded AQI 101–150
A 20-minute dog walk, not a 2.5-hour run. Keep it brief and easy.
Don’t go AQI 151+
Move it indoors. Above 200 that becomes everyone, not just sensitive groups.
Above 200 this stops being a personal call: everyone indoors.
Duration and intensity are two separate dials
| Under 20 min | 20–60 min | Over an hour | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | Go | Go | Go |
| Moderate | Go | Go | Go |
| Hard | Go | Go | Go |
Go Every combination lands the same way at this reading — a hard hour is no different from an easy twenty minutes. The two dials separate above 80.
Where people actually draw the line
All the thresholds people reported, and who reported them
- 60 Asthmatic runnerone runner’s own 156-run log
- 75–100 Daycare / schoolparents and staff in one r/toddlers thread, Aug 2025 — not a published rule
- 100 Parentcommunity-reported, escalating at 150 and 200
- 110 Runnercommunity-reported
If you’re staying in, filter the room you’re actually in
Ventilated Prairie, Imported Dust and Range Smoke
Wind is the main reason Oklahoma City’s readings behave the way they do. April is the windiest month of the year here and August the calmest, and even at the calm end of that range the air over an open prairie metro keeps moving, so locally produced emissions mostly leave the area before they can build into anything.
Which means a bad number here usually started somewhere else. Dry-season wind lifts soil off farmland in western Oklahoma and carries it east. Every March and April, prescribed range fires burn across the Flint Hills of Kansas and northern Oklahoma — around 2.2 million acres a year, on the Kansas health department’s estimate — putting particulate matter and ozone precursors into air that is often heading this way. Kansas runs a smoke management plan for that window and switches on a public smoke modeling tool in early March, ahead of the widespread burning.
The two imports do not look alike. Red Permian soil off the fields west of the city is gritty and settles visibly on cars and windowsills. Flint Hills smoke smells of burnt grass and can arrive under an otherwise blue sky, which is why the reading and the view disagree more often in spring here than in any other season.
Where this number sits
Of the 121 US metros reporting to us right now, Oklahoma City is number 60 and number 2 of the 2 we track in Oklahoma. The pollutant driving it today is PM2.5.
Nearby metros we also measure, and what they read at the same hour:
- Tulsa, OK — 98 miles away, AQI 43
- Wichita, KS — 154 miles away, AQI 42
- Dallas, TX — 190 miles away, AQI 42
- Fort Worth, TX — 190 miles away, AQI 42
Where this reading comes from
AirNow’s Oklahoma City reporting area, about 4.1 miles from the metro centre.
What has air quality in Oklahoma City actually been?
9 of the 30 days we have recorded so far went above AQI 100.
| Date | Daily max AQI | EPA band | Hours read |
|---|---|---|---|
| 51 | Moderate | 22 | |
| 56 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 97 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 84 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 55 | Moderate | 10 — partial day | |
| 64 | Moderate | 22 | |
| 71 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 60 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 55 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 58 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 58 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 52 | Moderate | 24 | |
| 100 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 100 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 90 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 108 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | 23 | |
| 119 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | 23 | |
| 80 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 112 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | 23 | |
| 136 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | 23 | |
| 156 | Unhealthy | 23 | |
| 143 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | 24 | |
| 97 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 71 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 129 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | 23 | |
| 136 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | 23 | |
| 126 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | 23 | |
| 93 | Moderate | 23 | |
| 84 | Moderate | 26 | |
| 93 | Moderate | 7 — partial day |
Questions about Oklahoma City
What is the air quality in Oklahoma City right now?
Which monitor does this number come from?
How does Oklahoma City compare with metros nearby?
Does this include pollen?
Put this number in context
Updated